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The church where George Washington worshipped is removing a plaque honouring the memory of America’s first president in the latest example of the way historic monuments are influencing contemporary politics.

Officers at Christ Church, in Alexandria, Virginia, said it was removing the plaque for the slave-owning president along with one for a second parishioner, General Robert Lee, who rose to the head of the Confederate army during the Civil War.

“The Vestry has unanimously decided that the plaques create a distraction in our worship space and may create an obstacle to our identity as a welcoming church, and an impediment to our growth and to full community with our neighbours,” church officers said in a letter to the congregation following a month-long consultation period.

Washington was one of the congregation’s founding members in 1773, paying for pew number five, while General Lee’s daughter left the church $10,000 in her will.

The two plaques have hung on either side of the altar since 1870, soon after Lee’s death, paid for by city residents.

Workers in New Orleans prepare to remove a statue of General Robert Lee in MayCredit:
AP

But local authorities across the US have removed a string of Confederate statues and memorials from public places in recent years.

Critics say there is no place in modern America for symbols associated with racism and slavery.

“We understand that both Washington and Lee lived in times much different than our own, and that each man, in addition to his public persona, was a complicated human being, and like all of us, a child of God,” they wrote.

The plaques are due to be relocated by next summer as the church decides how better to commemorate its famous worshippers.